Once upon a time, believe it or not, I was as much an Indie Rock girl as a BroadwayGirl. Yes, I grew up on showtunes and started seeing theatre with my Grandma and my parents as early I could walk. But it wasn’t my only love, and for a while wasn’t even my biggest love (you know how teenagers are, rebelling against the things they’ll eventually come back around to love the most). In the early early 2000s, I was as likely to be at the Mercury Lounge as the Majestic, as often at Arlene’s Grocery as I was at The Golden. I tended to buy tickets to shows as soon as they went on sale, to see bands like Modest Mouse and The Sounds and Jonah Matranga from Far. One of my favorites was a group called The Format, from Arizona, who I discovered while listening to a college radio station. When they announced a 2006 fall date at the Knitting Factory, I put two $16 tickets on my credit card before I had a chance to notice the concert was on Halloween (a night my friends would surely rather dress as sexy bumblebees than go to a concert with me).
As the show got closer I didn’t have any luck locating a partner. The show sold out as bigger name acts had been added to the lineup, and I saw tickets going for $50-65 on Craigslist; I thought about selling my extra ticket and pocketing the dough, but actually I didn’t consider it for long. I was a starving student and I knew what it was like when rich grownups snagged all of the tickets to see my favorite bands, just because they had read somewhere that they were the next big thing.
On a whim, two weeks before Halloween, I created my own Craigslist posting. “One Extra Ticket to The Format,” the ad read. “FREE but only for a real fan.” I didn’t request any specifics on how a potential date should prove his or her fandom, leaving it up to them to convince me. Surprisingly, the number of genuine, thought-out responses was meager at best (this was a decade ago, before Craigtlist had become synonymous with “creepster central”). But one email stood out. It was from a guy named Clyde who admitted he had never heard The Format, but was a huge follower of The Cardigans, another band on the bill that night. He had been out of town when tickets went on sale, and before he had a chance to buy a single for himself, the show was at capacity. He’d tried to buy tickets on eBay a bunch of times but kept getting out-bid around the $50 mark. He offered to pay me for the ticket – he just had to be there to see his favorite band perform.
I so identified with Clyde’s passion for his musical heroes (and his plight to find tickets) that I knew immediately he was the guy. I refused to take his money, and made arrangements to meet him at the venue (sans costume) on the evening of October 31.
Clyde was shy & awkward, and we struggled to make conversation before the show. But once the music started, we both lit up and vibed together like old friends. After an exhausting and exhilarating three-plus hour show, we were both sweaty and grinning, knowing without a doubt that our Halloween had kicked the ass of our friends who were out getting wasted or partying in a piece of spandex they deigned to call a costume.
When he asked what he could do to thank me for the ticket that cost me 16 bucks (but gave him a priceless evening), I simply said, “Pay it forward.” I figured someday he’d have the opportunity to share something valuable with a stranger, and hoped he’d give it away instead of selling to the highest bidder.
What I didn’t realize was that when it came to tickets, Clyde had far more access than I could have imagined. We had been communicating via hotmail accounts (that’s how long ago this was), but as we parted ways he gave me his business card – he worked for a company that sold blocks of Broadway tickets to school groups coming to New York from out of town. Because group leaders often wanted advice on which shows to see, every employee was required to see as many shows as possible – which meant Clyde, that lucky bastard, got a pair of tickets during previews to every single show on Broadway.
Clyde didn’t just “pay it forward;” he paid it back. Three weeks after our Halloween concert adventure, he invited me to be his +1 for a brand new Broadway show that had gotten raves earlier that year at the Atlantic. It was based on a play from the 1800s, he told me, and was based in Germany, and was musical directed by Michael Mayer. I knew who Michael was, but I was mostly out of the Broadway loop at that moment and knew little about Spring Awakening. I thought he was telling me it was a revival of an 1800s Broadway musical, which sounded kind of dowdy to me, and I almost said no. But then the passion, instilled in me by multiple generations of musical theatre performers and fans in my family, flared up and I shrugged, “What do I have to lose?”
